New Method for Integrity Constraint Checking in Deductive Databases

摘要

In the literature, several integrity checking methods for updates in deductivedatabases are described. All of these methods try to instantiate the specified integrity constraints with the update in order to constrain the full check to only a relevant part of the database. Globally, they can be divided in two major classes of methods; methods based on 'induced updates' and methods based on 'potential updates'. In this article a new method will be presented. This method represents also a new class of methods. While in the first two classes one has to generate induced updates and potential updates respectively, even if they are not relevant to any of the constraints, the new method, which will be called the 'method based on inconsistency rules', does not have this drawback. Therefore, the proposed method is potentially far more efficient than any other method based on induced updates or potential updates.